1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to a field of semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, and in particular relates to a chemical mechanical polisher (CMP) and a polishing pad component thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Chemical mechanical polishing technology enables global planarization for very large scale integrated circuits, and has the advantages of high polishing speed, high flatness etc. Therefore, chemical mechanical polisher has become one of the most critical tools in the semiconductor manufacturing field.
FIGS. 1A-1B are a plan view and a section view illustrating a structure of a polishing platen of a conventional chemical mechanical polisher. As shown in FIG. 1A, the polishing platen 110 may be, for example, circular. As shown in FIG. 1B, the polishing platen 110 has a flat surface 115. In a working state, a polishing pad 130 is stuck on the flat surface 115 of the polishing platen 110. The polishing pad 130 may be a single-layered pad, or may comprise a polishing top pad 132 and a polishing bottom pad 134 beneath the polishing top pad 132.
FIG. 2 illustrates a structure of the conventional chemical mechanical polisher. As shown in FIG. 2, the chemical mechanical polisher comprises a polishing device 210. The polishing device 210 shown in FIG. 2 has three polishing platens which may be used to perform a chemical mechanical polishing process on three wafers at the same time. In addition, the chemical mechanical polisher may further comprise a post cleaning device 220. The post cleaning device 220 is used to perform a cleaning process, such as megasonic cleaning, brushing, drying etc., on a wafer subjected to the chemical mechanical polishing process.
As for a polishing platen, sometimes it is necessary to use different slurries to perform chemical mechanical polishing processes due to different requirements of polishing. When a slurry is replaced, the polishing pad needs to be replaced correspondingly so as to avoid unexpected chemical reactions between different slurries. For a conventional chemical mechanical polisher, since the polishing pad is stuck on the polishing platen, it is necessary to tear the stuck and used polishing pad off the polishing platen and stick a new polishing pad again on the polishing platen when the polishing pad is replaced. The inventor of the present invention has found that this causes the following problems. First, it is not easy to tear the stuck and used polishing pad off the polishing platen, which makes it hard to replace the polishing pad during a chemical mechanical polishing process. Second, the torn-off polishing pad is usually damaged and thus it has to be discarded, which causes great waste of polishing pads. That is, the consumable cost of the chemical mechanical polishing process is increased.